Kate White with her daughter Ela Southgate

MUSICIANS and poets gathered in Swiss Cottage library on Thursday to show you can have dementia and still “live with joy”.

Kate White, a Hampstead resident and a member of the Reimagining Dementia group, told the New Journal: “I’ve seen so many people with dementia really flourish in ways that are totally unexpected, finding things that they would never have done before, doing now.”

After caring for her husband, the psychotherapist and pianist John Southgate, for 12 years while he had dementia, Ms White is now on a mission to use creativity as medicine for those with the condition.

Mr Southgate lived in Nassington Road, Hampstead, with Ms White for 33 years until his death in 2021.

A “working-class lad” from Nottingham, he was supervised by attachment theorist John Bowlby, who also lived in Hampstead, and set up the John Bowlby Centre with his wife. He adored bebop jazz and performing. Even while struggling with dementia, Mr Southgate could be found tinkling the ivories in the Magdala pub.

Ms White said “his ability to play jazz stayed up until his last year” and was something that soothed and motivated him.

One evening they went to a choir performance at Buckingham Palace.

She said: “When we came home having listened to this music, he went straight to the piano and he was really lit up. It was 9 o’clock at night and he was just playing away. He got a bit fed up being persuaded to get in the bath. We had one of those hoist things. So I put Ella Fitzgerald on at full volume and that got us through it. We just sang away while having a bath.

“I think people sense that dementia is about closing down. But actually we found it opened up things. We spent more time together, honestly, because I had to give up lots of things to be alongside him. We became more connected.”

Berni Godinho, another Reimagining Dementia member who lives in West Hampstead, said of her husband who had dementia and played the tabla (hand drum from India): “Music was the last thing that went. It’s so powerful. The most powerful.”

After returning from a gig with music that took her husband back to his Iranian roots, she said: “He was just a completely different person so when we went home he was in an uplifted mood. He was much more cooperative, rather than in a struggling mood when you’re down.”

Ms White emphasised the importance of increasing community support around people living with dementia in the borough. “We want to bring dementia out of the cupboard and say we don’t need to be so fearful, but we do need to find support and companionship,” she told the audience.

When she asked her husband what it was like in those moments when he forgot something, he said he felt “frightened” and “anxious”. She asked him what helped him in those times. “Without a moment’s hesitation, he said ‘I need love, I need neighbours, I need community’,” she said.

Brahmjot Singh and Kiranpal Singh play the tabla drums and the santoor

At the library last week Ms White’s daughter, Ela Southgate, who was named after Ella Fitzgerald, performed bossa nova tracks and her father’s favourite songs on the piano alongside guitarist Matt Wall.

Indian classical music duo Kiranpal Singh and Brahmjot Singh, who recently played in No 10’s Rose Garden, played the santoor (a traditional 100-string instrument) and tabla to the audience. Ronald Amaze read his poetry on what it’s like to live with dementia.

FOLLOW US ON FACEBOOK. CLICK BANNER.